ICT Ethics: Volkswagen Company

The Volkswagen is a German automobile company. It was founded on May 28, 1937. It was founded by German Labor Front. The headquarters of the company is in Wolfsburg. The Volkswagen is the largest automobile company in the whole world. This car is also known as the people’s car. Although the company is very well reputed and very efficient in the automobiles market but, there have been some issues regarding the ethics of the company. The ethics are very important in each and every field of the industry. And in addition to this the automobile industry is no exception. There are some classical theories of ethics that must be followed by all the companies. In this essay the case of the Volkswagen Automobile company is taken.

The Automobile Company is the best in the world. But there has been an issue with the company. The issue known as the Volkswagen emission scandal (Goel, 2015). It started on September 18, 2015. The United States EPA had issued the notice of the violation of the clean Act to the company. It was found that the company had started the injecting the turbocharged direct engines during the testing of the cars to control the emission effects of the cars. As a result the cars passed the nitrous limit of the US standard but the actual amount of nitrous that is used by the car is 40 times more than that of the permissible limit. Using these techniques the company sold millions of cars worldwide and also made a very good business out of the nitrous effects. Later on it was found out that their certain amount of emission discrepancies between the European and the models in the US. It was found out by the ICCT on 2014. It was found out by a group of researchers that were based at West Virginia. The data that was provided by them showed that the amount of the nitrous in the cars that were manufactured by Volkswagen were more than the permissible level. After the incident the company was subjected to regular investigations. In addition to the stocks of company were lowered and the prices of the cars of the company fell with a great leap. In addition to this the company had to pay $2.8 billion as fine to the government for the cheating on the emission test. The company had agreed to the punishment readily. Hence, this was an act of unethical measures for the company.

The ethical issues that had arisen due to the cheating procedures applied by the company had also violated the classical ethical theories. The theory of Utilitarianism is concerned with the maximum utilization of the resource by the maximum people and hence according to the theory the company should have notified the government about their exceeding amount of nitrous in their cars. Hence, they violated the Utilitarian Theory of classical ethics. In addition to this, the deontology theory was also violated by the company. The deontology theory deals with the duty towards all human beings (Chiu et al., 2014). Hence, the company did not serve the deontology theory and hence violated it. In addition to this there is the virtue ethics in the classical ethical theory (Paquette et al., 2015). It is believed according to the virtue ethics that if a person is morally correct he would not be conducting any kind of unethical behavior in his professional life or at the workplace. But the company were not morally correct while conducting the test and hence the virtue ethics was also violated (Hursthouse, 2013). In addition to this, there is the Contact theory and it deals with the justification of the events that occur. But the situation that is at is not at all justified and hence the contact theory is also violated (Magelssen et al., 2016).

The Company and authorities should have looked into the testing procedures from much earlier before the testing procedure were conducted. In addition to this the equipment and the software on which the cars are simulated should be made fool proof so that the companies cannot cheat during the emission testing procedures. In addition to this, the company should also have considered that cheating in these tests would be putting their reputation at stake and hence should have never tried these procedures.

For conclusion it can be said that the ethics are very important in life and also in any kind of profession. The report has properly displayed this with the case of the Volkswagen Emission scandal. The report has been used to display the situation and also the reputation of the company has been displayed. In addition to this the classical ethical theories and their violation has also been displayed efficiently in this report.

References

Chiu, C. M., Wang, E. T., Fang, Y. H., & Huang, H. Y. (2014). Understanding customers' repeat purchase intentions in B2C e?commerce: the roles of utilitarian value, hedonic value and perceived risk. Information Systems Journal, 24(1), 85-114.

Goel, A. (2015). Volkswagen: The Protagonist in Diesel Emission Scandal.

Griffin, P. A., & Lont, D. H. (2016). Game Changer? The Impact of the VW Emission Cheating Scandal on the Co-Integration of Large Automakers’ Securities.

Hursthouse, R. (2013). Normative virtue ethics. ETHICA, 645.

Magelssen, M., Gjerberg, E., Lillemoen, L., Førde, R., & Pedersen, R. (2016). Ethics support in community care makes a difference for practice. Nursing Ethics, 0969733016667774.

Paquette, M., Sommerfeldt, E. J., & Kent, M. L. (2015). Do the ends justify the means? Dialogue, development communication, and deontological ethics. Public Relations Review, 41(1), 30-39.